Paintless Dent Repair (PDR) saves money over traditional repair

Paintless Dent Repair (PDR) provides clients and insurance companies an affordable and safe alternative to traditional repairs

Paintless Dent Repair

A hail damaged roof is repaired using Paintless Dent Repair (PDR)

After a hail storm cars can be covered in dents from hail strikes. Depending on the severity of the storm dents can be the size of nickels to the size of golf balls, and in some cases even the size of oranges. Traditionally to fix a damaged vehicle, its individual panels would have to be stripped, dents smoothed and paint reapplied. This would come with a significant cost, particularly if more than one panel was affected by hail damage.

Repainting jeopardizes the value of a vehicle and leaves the coat more susceptible to rust, fading, chipping and pealing. This has to do with the way paint is applied in factories vs. local body shops. In a factory paint is applied at the beginning of vehicle assembly. Paint is applied to the frame and panels before anything else is added. This allows for painters to coat the entire panel and frame inside and out. It also insures that one even color is applied.

Repainting

Only in a factory is paint applied to the entire frame at once.

Once painting is completed the factory then “bakes” the paint to the car at extremely high temperatures. This guarantees the paint’s longevity.

Auto body shops don’t usually have the resources to “bake” paint onto a vehicle and can’t usually strip a vehicle down to it’s frame.  They generally only apply paint to the exterior portions of panels and frames by tapping and masking the rest of the vehicle. Paint is usually dried at room temperature. Overall the coat is weaker, particularly along its edges.

Re-Painted surfaces are also usually more uneven and rough than factory painted ones. This is because the factory panels are brand new when paint is applied. Matching the overall smoothness of factory panels requires panels to be perfectly clean (dust and debri free) and buffed extensively. Few body shops, if any, can match factory smoothness.

Lastly, Auto-body shops don’t have access to the exact paint that was used on a vehicle originally. Even if the shop takes the time to get the paint information from the factory to match a specific factory color, paint varies greatly by batch so matching colors exactly is impossible (even at a factory paint colors vary from batch to batch). This means that more than likely the re-painted panel will likely be a slightly different color then the original coat.

Paint-less Dent Repair insures the original body paint remains untouched. Dents are “pushed” or “pulled” using a variety of innovative techniques and instruments. This preserves the body paint and dramatically reduces the cost of hail claims repairs. For more on PDR cost saving see the chart below. 

Note actual cost will vary depending on location, claim size and vehicle type. 

Re-Painting (Per Panel)

$ $ 1,000-3,000

TOTAL
  • Requires significant labor costs
  • Diminishes value of vehicle
  • Requires hours of repairs
  • Can’t be do on-site

Paintless Repair (Per Panel)

$ $ 100-1000

TOTAL
  • Prevents repainting
  • Preserves paint quality
  • Repairs take 1-3 hours
  • Can be done on-site

Contact Us: 210-490-1155